Milepost 454: Michelle Cowart shoots a photo of the "Most Photographed View in the Smokies," near Soco Gap, N.C., while holding her 9-month-old, Ruby. The family was headed to Maggie Valley, N.C., on vacation from Orlando, Fla.
ASHEVILLE, N.C., Milepost 385 — The Sarley family won't be spending any money in Virginia on this Blue Ridge Parkway vacation.
The family of four — parents Katia and Steve and daughters Brooke and Betsey — came from Florida to western North Carolina for a non-Disney getaway.
Like so many others, they chose Asheville as their base, and they're loving it.
"This is the nature part of our vacation," Katia Sarley said as she soaked in the sweeping view from the high meadows of Craggy Gardens. She said the rugged mountains were a refreshing shift from theme parks. "It's plastic, it's not real. This is the real thing. We don't get vistas like this."
Like so many others, they didn't choose the largest city along the parkway as the hub of their vacation, and they won't visit any of the Virginia section of the parkway. They knew about Roanoke, but didn't know of any attractions there besides the parkway. In Asheville, the Biltmore Estate helped draw them, even though they didn't visit it.
They spent 10 days in Asheville, much of it on the parkway, spending money on hotel rooms, meals, gas, T-shirts and other souvenirs.
Economic studies show that the Blue Ridge Parkway brings billions of dollars annually to local economies, but the money isn't spread evenly along the 469-mile route. The most recent study showed that for every parkway-related dollar that fueled local economies in Virginia, $5 poured into North Carolina communities. And although the parkway has a growing number of visitors, more than 23 million last year, North Carolina has the faster growth.
Leaders in the Roanoke Valley agree that it has not realized its parkway tourism potential. Too many visitors, they say, visit the Peaks of Otter and Mabry Mill and bypass the Roanoke Valley altogether. Some tourists, such as the Sarleys, create a Blue Ridge Parkway vacation without setting foot in Virginia.
Some say that can change. They say starting Roanoke's parkway tourism engine in earnest means effectively marketing the valley's relatively small attractions as a package. Still, few envision an engine that runs as smoothly as it does down at the parkway's other urban neighbor, Asheville.
"We haven't really realized what we have," said Explore Park director Roger Ellmore. "Here in Roanoke, we just kind of take this scenery for granted."
Asheville fought harder
Some say the disparity between how Asheville and Roanoke view the parkway is rooted in 19th-century history. In the 1800s, Asheville was already a tourist spot, attracting Southern lowland vacationers to what they called the "salubrious clime" of the highlands.
Then-Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes declared in 1934 "the tourist trade is the very life blood of this city [Asheville] and a large part of the surrounding country" in his explanation for choosing the hotly contested "all North Carolina route" for the parkway, according to "The Blue Ridge Parkway" by historian Harley Jolley.
At that time, Roanoke's lifeblood was the railroad. Though places such as the Hotel Mons at the Peaks of Otter were in operation in the 1800s, the region around Roanoke has never been defined as a tourist hotspot.
"Roanoke was industrial, largely," said Jolley, an author and retired history professor. "Roanoke gets an overnight stop. Then Asheville gets a three-night stop."
Moreover, for Roanoke, the parkway was almost happenstance; for Asheville it was a serious economic victory. Asheville fought a bitter routing battle over whether the parkway would favor Tennessee or North Carolina. North Carolina plotted a specific course for the road and made the successful pitch that the parkway's rightful home is in the North Carolina mountains.
Because the parkway's northern end was at Shenandoah National Park, Virginia's section of the road was a given.
"It didn't have to fight," Jolley said.
Others say there are even more immutable reasons that Roanoke plays second fiddle to North Carolina in parkway traffic. For one thing, Roanoke doesn't have a big-name attraction like the Biltmore Estate, which attracts nearly 1 million visitors a year and is adjacent to the parkway and Asheville.
"It's world famous," said Pete Haislip, Roanoke County's director of parks, recreation and tourism. "They've taken that destination attraction and built around it."
Another reason, some suggest, is that Asheville's mountains are more stunning.
"It makes Virginia seem more like hills," said Liz Belcher, who as the Roanoke Valley's greenways coordinator, is working toward linking many Roanoke-area trails with parkway trails.
Indeed, Wayne Strickland, president of the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau, said a 1996 survey of parkway visitors yielded some unflattering facts about Virginia's parkway.
"One of the comments they made is that if they had to do it again, they wouldn't do Virginia," said Strickland, who is also director of the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission. "They also made the comment that it wasn't as attractive, there were more incursions."
A reason to Explore
Not everyone is content to let Asheville run away with the prize. Explore Park was built in part to be the reason that parkway drivers would stop in the Roanoke Valley. Though the park has struggled with identity and funding, it is considered the best hope of altering the average parkway visitor's blow-through relationship with the valley. It provides a least one critical component that the Roanoke stretch lacked for years — a toilet.
"A bathroom and information is a reason to stop," said Ellmore, the park director. "A lot of people will say 'we didn't even know this was here. We just stopped because we saw there was a bathroom.’ ”
The 1,100-acre park in Roanoke County attracts 90,000 visitors per year. It opened in 1994, but the road connecting Explore to the parkway didn't open until 1998. Ellmore said the park has only recently developed a "critical mass" of attractions that will fuel name recognition.
"We've always struggled with the park being one of those best-kept secrets, and we don't really want to be that," he said.
A central problem has been the park's sporadic funding, Ellmore said. As state budget deficits mounted, state contributions to Explore Park dropped from more than $500,000 to zero. At the same time, there has been little effort in the state capital to market the parkway and the state's mountainous west.
"Go to Richmond, ask what Explore Park is," Ellmore said. "Nobody knows what you're talking about."
Ellmore said many on the parkway don't know about Explore, either. The park isn't even on many of the older maps posted at parkway restrooms and information centers. Getting the word out, he said, is more than half the battle.
"Invariably when you get people in here, they love it," he said.
A matter of marketing
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| Milepost 173: Festivalgoers dance to the tunes of the Celtic and African band Baka Beyond at the second annual FloydFest, a world music festival held in August in a farm field off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Patrick County. |
Kjolhede is responsible for much of the Roanoke Valley's tourism advertising. He oversees a roughly $1 million budget drawn from the valley's five local governments. The cover of the bureau's valley guidebook shows a couple picnicking along the parkway with the slogan "It's in our nature." The parkway will also be an important part of an upcoming guidebook that will focus on outdoor recreation. Still, Kjolhede said, the parkway will not be the valley's silver bullet.
"We acknowledge the parkway, but it's not a focal point of our marketing," he said. "It's not our focal point because we don't make money off the parkway. The parkway itself does not generate dollars for us."
In Asheville, the convention and visitors bureau enjoys a $3 million budget, drawn from a 3 percent tax on all lodging and restaurant meals in the area. An additional 1 percent tax funds efforts to create new tourist destinations.
The money certainly helps, said Chris Cavanaugh, the Asheville bureau's president and a vice president at the Biltmore Estate. But he said Asheville businesses consider each other, and the parkway, to be parts of a greater whole — an engine of mountain tourism.
"The goal is really to position the parkway as a destination in itself," Cavanaugh said. "The tourism industry has long ago seen the value of using the parkway that way. . . . The parkway allows that guest to say, 'Yes, I had my mountain experience.’ ”
Cavanaugh said the tourist industry is more often pointing people to the parkway, rather than trying to pull them off of it into town.
"They look at the parkway as part of the attraction to Asheville," he said.
Pointing the way
Some business advocates say the parkway itself is hurting the effort to boost local economies such as Roanoke's. They say that if economic development is really the name of the game, the parkway should help drivers out with a sign pointing the way.
It's an ongoing debate between merchants and the parkway — how to fuel tourism without turning the parkway into a clutter of billboards and advertisements. Parkway Superintendent Dan Brown said guidebooks and parkway publications can guide travelers to restaurants and lodges without adding clutter on the road. But many on the industry side say additional signs don't have to be gaudy, but they should be erected.
"There has been a long-standing tension," said Mark Horton, assistant general manager at Doe Run Lodge near Fancy Gap, in Carroll County. The lodge is adjacent to the parkway and has clashed with the government over access and signs. "I'm sure there's folks who drive right by us and don't even know we're here."
"To me, if they allowed signage, that would show they want business to work with the parkway and vice versa," Horton added. "They really don't work with local businesses."
Roanoke-area leaders say the core problem isn't signs. It's that the valley isn't sure what it's selling to parkway visitors. Roanoke County's Haislip said hope lies in effectively marketing the valley's many smaller attractions, encouraging parkway-related businesses such as recreational-vehicle parks and restaurants near the valley's parkway exits.
That means pushing Explore Park, Mill Mountain Zoo and the city's downtown attractions. Belcher, the greenways coordinator, sees great economic hope in the publication this year of a Western Virginia birding and wildlife trail guidebook, which will include spots on the parkway. Another new publication uses the parkway as the central corridor for a guide to bluegrass and old-time music. Other guides focus on crafts or historic or recreational points of interest. All of them include the Roanoke area.
"We need to market what we have, which is a much more difficult sell," Haislip said. "I think one of the things we've failed to do is package and market what we have to offer."
Tourism leaders say the Roanoke Valley's success in capturing parkway commerce is a matter of will and determination, a mindset shift toward aggressively marketing the valley's attractions. It has proved hard to do.
"We keep stabbing at it with our forks, trying to do something," said Horton, the lodge manager.